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Having Trouble Sleeping?

7/30/2017

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In 1994, I competed in the ITU World Sprint Championships in Paris, France, where I ended up 4th.  Heats were run in order to pare down the field to the 8 finalists competing for gold.  Some of the preliminary heats were run the night before the final.  After cooling down, showering and eating a late dinner, I remember lying in bed completely awake with no hope of falling asleep.  My heart was beating strongly and at about 50bpm (my resting HR at the time was between 30-35bpm), which, relatively speaking, felt fast and out of the ordinary while at rest.  I’m sure there were other examples of unrest at night after evening efforts, but this one sticks out in particular.

Growing up, I was a swimmer.  From age five through college, it was 1-2 workouts a day, six days a week with a total of two weeks off a year.  During high school and collegiate seasons, the evening workout would finish between 6-7pm.  During club season, and dependent on the time of year, the evening workout would end between 6:30 and 8:30pm.  Yet, I do not recall difficulty falling asleep.  Probably because this was the regular occurrence so it had become habit to my body.

As a professional triathlete, balancing the training for multiple sports required some workouts finishing in the evening.  Luckily, I was successful enough to not have to fit training around a part- or full-time job, so training after a shift or full work day (in other words, at night) was not something I had to do.  I don’t recall ever training at night and there were few workouts that extended into the evening.  I tended to get an early start with the first workout of the day and typically finished training by early- to mid-afternoon.

Now, as a Masters cyclist, I typically ride in the early morning, at 0-dark-30 and am done by 6-6:30am.  A strength session is added some days over lunch.  After the Spring time change, I often participate in a group ride on Tuesday evenings that starts at 6pm and ends somewhere between 7:30-7:45.  What I find is that I don’t sleep very well Tuesday night after this evening ride.  I’m amped up, my body is restless, my core temp runs a bit hot so I’m uncomfortable in bed.  Even though my eyes start to flutter shut as I read in bed to wind down, I get twitchy as I start to fall asleep, ultimately wake up and am unable to fall into a deep sleep for a few hours.  Sometimes it feels like I never do fall asleep. 

This is a scenario with which many endurance athletes are familiar – restless sleep after a tough evening or night workout, or a race that ends late.  It’s frustrating and stressful to lie awake in bed, wondering if your body and mind will ever “turn off” so you can actually get some sleep.  Despite being fatigued from the physical effort and tired from the now-late hour, there’s little hope of sleep coming.  And, even when you do finally fall asleep, you wake up repeatedly and find yourself watching the minutes on the clock tick away.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a simple answer for why this occurs.  There are various factors which contribute to post-workout (or race) insomnia, so by better understanding these factors hopefully you will be able to impact your inability to sleep on certain nights.

First off, you’re dealing with dehydration.  Because you’ve just worked out, your core temperature is higher and because you’re dehydrated from the workout, your core remains hotter because your body is working harder to do even the simplest of things compared to when you’re properly hydrated.  This elevated core temp runs against the nature of things at bed time – lowering temperature, slowing down of bodily functions.  Instead, you’re elevated and in a heightened sense. 

Next, you’re dealing with the after effects of being in an excitable fight-or-flight state.  Your CNS and endocrine system are amped up and don’t immediately “turn off” just because you’re done with your workout or race.  Multiple hormones have been released and continue to be released into your system as survival mechanisms – such as cortisol, adrenaline and norepinephrine – all of which impact your ability for a peaceful sleep.

Due to the excitement associated with racing and the excitability of the body during long or hard workouts, the body releases more adrenaline and norepinephrine.  Adrenaline is the first to drop off and does so fairly quickly once you’re done exercising or racing.  However, studies show it may take as long as 48 hours for norepinephrine levels to return to normal.  So, while you may sleep just fine after short or easy evening workouts, you may still find it hard to fall asleep after particularly hard ones.

As for cortisol, it is released as a response to stress.  This is why you see elevated cortisol levels in over-trained athletes or people who experience way too much work-related stress.  Cortisol is not bad, but too much of it certainly is.  It’s a hormone that helps drive positive change through training stimulus.  When the workload of a workout or series of training sessions or a race is too great, elevated cortisol levels can become regular or even chronic, which in turn represses the body’s ability to grow (in simple terms) because a catabolic rather than anabolic state is perpetuated.

Cortisol levels naturally fluctuate, within a day as well as day-to-day.  Typically, cortisol levels are lowest when you’re ready to go to bed (the body is winding itself down).  Evening challenging workouts or races drives cortisol levels up and, thus, runs counter to the natural cycle to which the body is accustomed.  The closer to bedtime the hard workout or race is completed, the more elevated cortisol will be when you climb into bed.

Some of you may train in the evening or at night most days due to work and family schedules.  So, you may be reading this and saying, “Not a problem for me.”  Great!  This means your body has adapted to your late-in-the-day training habits.  The insomnia is typically reserved for those who occasionally exercise rigorously in the evenings; so, something to which these athletes have not created a pattern.

So, if post-workout/race insomnia is an ongoing challenge for you, what can be done about it?  Here are just a few recommendations.

First, try to minimize stress in your life.  There are three buckets of stressors – physical, mental and emotional – and you fill each of them up to a certain degree every day.  The challenge is that the body reads them and reacts to them pretty much the same.  So, while it’s important for us to treat each of them separately, the body copes with them collectively.  If one or more of the buckets are overflowing, it’s time to make some changes in your life.  As discussed above, stress raises cortisol which in turn inhibits sleep which in turn inhibits recuperation.  Finding ways to keep your stress levels in check will help you keep your cortisol levels lower.  Next, cut the caffeine out either directly prior to or during these evening workouts/races.  Caffeine stays in your system for hours, so it may be well after midnight before the stimulating effects of the drug actually wear off and allow your body to calm down enough so you can get to sleep. 

After your hard session, drink a cold glass of water, then hop into a cool shower.  This approach covers two bases.  First, you’ll work on hydration.  When properly hydrated, the body doesn’t have to work as hard to do its simple, everyday tasks (like pumping blood).  Second, the cold water cools you down from within while the cool shower cools you down from without.  Since your core temp and skin temp are both elevated, you will be more sensitive to the temperature of the water.  Start with it warm and gradually decrease the temperature until the shower is running comfortably cold.  It should feel refreshing in its effect.  Let it run over your head, down your back and over the muscles you just worked.  The cooler you can be when climbing into bed, the better off you’ll be in terms of actually falling asleep.

Lastly, if you’ve been lying awake staring at the ceiling for over an hour, get out of bed and try to fall asleep somewhere else in the house. Surrounding yourself with different energy is sometimes all that’s required to lower the stimulating feelings you’re experiencing.   I find that moving to the couch on the main floor tends to do the trick more often than not.  I notice a fairly quick calming down, I settle in to the contours of the couch and I fall into a deep sleep.

We all have those sleepless nights.  But, knowing what we can do to minimize their occurrence and their impact when we do get them is more than half the battle.
​
Happy Training,
Coach Nate
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PEDs:  The Burden of Proof

7/22/2017

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Given the spurious nature of the "I've never tested positive" defense and deep-rooted corruption to the very top of the sporting world, the burden of proof has definitively shifted.  It is upon the athlete to not just prove innocence, but also prove an absence of guilt.  Empty declarations no longer suffice.
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Athletes Coping With Injury

7/15/2017

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Today, I decided to pull the plug on my racing season.  Here it is, mid-July and in Colorado we are entering the heart of hill climb season on the cycling race calendar.  I love me some hill climb races.  In fact, today is one of my favorites, the Mt. Evans Hill Climb.  Evans starts in Idaho Springs and climbs over 7,000ft over 28.5 miles, winding up the highest paved road in North America and topping out at roughly 14,200ft.  It’s a grinder and I have yet to master it, though I have cracked the “mythical” 2-hour barrier with a PR of 1:58.

So, with 3 State Championship races – hill climb (Evans); criterium; and road race – and the Hill Climb National Championships being 4-of-the-5 races left on my race calendar, you might be asking exactly why I decided to pull the rip cord on racing.  Well, let me tell you.

If you’re a regular follower of ORION Training Systems, then you know a dream of my wife’s and mine is to split time between Boulder and Nosara, Costa Rica.  We’ve purchased land and are breaking ground very soon.  Our goal is to have the sleepy beach home finished in time for our 25th anniversary next July so we can celebrate in Nosara and, more importantly, in our own slice of heaven.  A month ago, directly after the State TT Champs, we traveled to Nosara for some beach time and to finalize the architectural plans for our home.  It was also a perfectly-timed break for me to unplug from riding the bike for a little over a week, recharge the batteries and prepare to knuckle down for the final push into the races mentioned above.

I ran on the beach the first couple days in Nosara, to keep moving rather than for fitness.  When I awoke our third day, my right big toe was blown up big time, was hot to the touch and throbbing with pain.  At first, I figured the running had created some sort of bruise around my big toe joint.  But, as the swelling spread to the upper-half of my foot, I realized it was another attack of gout.  In the past 15 years, I’ve had four gout attacks.  The first was the worst.  The swelling was up to my ankle and a light bed sheet atop my foot felt like a cinder block had been dropped on it.  The next two attacks were years apart, not as severe (though still very painful) and lasted 5-10 days.  This attack was similar to the past two, but here it is nearly a month later and I’m still not past it.

After seeing a preeminent gout specialist here in Boulder – weird, given how active a community Boulder is and that gout typically afflicts those who don’t take very good care of themselves – I’m not on an aggressive round of prednisone for the next 15 days.  And, despite the four attacks being spread out by several years each, I decided to start a daily medication that I’ll take for the rest of my life and that will ensure I never have another attack.  It’s worth it to me.

Thank you for indulging me the story.  As serious endurance athletes, especially as we evolve into Masters athletes, injury is something we all will deal with at some point in our athletic careers.  Some injuries will be minor and may require no time off; others will be severe enough to require time off, either a little bit or a lot.  In any case, how we cope with the injuries is critical.

Being fit and athletic, training hard and competing, fighting tooth and nail is part of who we are at our cores.  As I like to say, we’ve been training and competing long enough by the time we’re Masters athletes that they’re imprinted on our DNA.  When the training and competing is suddenly taken away from us, then, temporarily, a part of us dies.  Depending on how much we define ourselves by our sports and our accomplishments, the impact of the temporary death can be massive.

Here we are, high-level, finely-tuned athletic machines.  We invest blood, sweat and tears into our endeavors on a daily basis.  “I can’t” is rarely part of our vocabulary.  Our 1-to-10 pain scale is skewed compared to mere mortals.  Yet, the ramifications of injuries bring us to our knees.  Some of the first thoughts that run through our heads is, “How long will this last?” or “How long will I be out of commission?” or “Once I’m healthy, will I ever get back to 100%, let alone get my fitness back?”  We feel lost, like a ship without a rudder.  When I was younger and racing triathlon professionally, I had few injuries and even fewer that forced me to miss training (I can recall one Achilles injury, actually).  Yet, I became an insecure, stressed out fool during that Achilles injury.  I was not fun to be around because I was so on edge with it.  It occupied my mind 24/7 and my frustration grew as the injury persisted.  I did eventually get over it and I did return to top form.  But until then, I was an ass.

Fast forward to today.  I’m over 20 years older and, I hope, at least a little wiser.  I am disappointed with this gout attack.  The timing of it is terrible.  It’s uncomfortable.  And the drugs I’m taking make me feel eviscerated.  At a HR and RPE similar to threshold, my watts are down 20%.  My legs feel fantastic, which means the break in Costa Rica was the right call.  But, my HR spikes to 160+ very quickly and when it beats that fast, it feels … weird.  Not like it’s supposed to.  The meds are doing a number on me. I anticipate these symptoms will go away when I’m done with the prednisone.

I don’t race for experiences.  I race to win or to help my teammates win.  I can’t do either right now.  Not when it really becomes “go time” in these races.  Rather than being a hammer, I would be a nail and would be driven into the tarmac in no time flat by the other hammers in the Masters peloton.  No thanks.

Like I said, I’m disappointed.  But, stopping is the right choice.  I rue the missed opportunities.  After all, I’m 48 and not getting any younger or faster.  Any missed race is a missed opportunity to prove to Father Time that I’m cheating the inevitable erosion of my physical prowess.  That I can still pull out a masterful race execution in a hill climb.  That dipping under that 2-hour barrier at Evans is still possible even now.  I’ve relaxed enough in that athletics no longer defines who I am.  I have chosen bike racing as the sport through which I express myself.  Growing up it was swimming; post-college it was triathlon.  When bike racing isn’t fun anymore, I’ll find the next means of expression.  

Injuries suck.  No doubt about it, no way around it.  My advice to you is to try relaxing when you’re hit with an injury.  It is so, so easy to allow injury to consume us and create unnecessary emotional and mental stress around it.  And that added, self-imposed stress actually slows down the recovery and healing process.  You will get past the injury.  You will return to 100%.  You will regain your top form.  All this will take time, but it will all happen.  Give yourself permission to relax, to lean into the recovery process and to embrace the downtime.  If instead athletics define who you are, you do yourself a disservice.  Athletics can be extremely important to your life without defining you.  There are things in life that are infinitely more important than competing and a finishers medal or a podium spot.

So, what’s the silver lining here?  I’m coming off a fantastic if less comfortable vacation in Costa Rica that most definitely recharged my batteries.  Since late-June, as this gout attack has oscillated between getting better and worse, I’ve ridden enough to provide some mental clarity and joy, yet not enough to create lasting fatigue.  I’m fresh.  I’m ready to start game planning for 2018 and get a huge head start on preparation.  While the rest of the peloton is winding down, I’ll be ramping up.  And, given that it’s mid-July, I can also start running as soon as my big toe is fully calmed down.  I absolutely love trail running in the Boulder mountains in the fall and winter.  Why not get started with this fantastic means of cross-training in the next couple weeks?

I rode just for the joy of it today.  I didn’t watch my watts.  I took in some dirt road climbs I had not previously ridden.  I didn’t care how long I was out there.  I smiled a lot.  I enjoyed the scenery and found beauty in things I would have otherwise missed were my head down and I were focused on the effort.  Three hours passed quickly.  I like to say that at some point, the training is no longer fun.  We can find enjoyment at times, but the fun factor evaporates once we start cracking the whip on ourselves and pushing toward goals of improvement in some capacity.  It is the natural course of things.  Today wasn’t fun, but it sure was enjoyable.  And because my 2018 prep will be extended by a couple months, I plan to find more enjoyment before it’s time to knuckle down in my regimen and get more serious. 

Hope this perspective helps when you hit your next injury.
​

Happy Training,
​Coach Nate

 
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The "Passionate Kisses" doping Defense

7/14/2017

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Hypocrisy in the 2017 Tour de France

7/12/2017

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The 2017 Tour de France is halfway done and has been equal parts boring, unpredictable and rife with hypocrisy.  From sprinters and GC contenders left wanting, to a shocking number of crashes to inconsistent rulings by the UCI, this Tour will prove to be memorable for all the wrong reasons.
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The Stupidity of the "Hack" Culture

7/8/2017

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What is it with all the hacks that have overtaken the world like the Black Plague?  Whether in a bookstore, on Twitter or anywhere on the internet, you’ll find more books and articles on hacks and quick fixes than discarded oxygen bottles at Everest’s Base Camp.  We’re told these hacks promise short cuts to whatever end goal we dream of achieving – losing inches off our waists, fixing a common household problem, learning to play an instrument in an afternoon, being bigger/faster/stronger than ever before, and so on.


It is all really nauseating.  Like, I start to get a rash whenever I see yet another “hack” article.

Here’s the deal.  None of this hack bullshit is new.  None of it.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is a pile of brontosaurus turds.  Hacks are in the vein of marginal gains, and we all know what tripe that concept is.  And, if you still believe in marginal gains, my condolences.  You probably also believe that clapping loudly also brought Tinkerbell back to life.  I think the reason I get so bent out of shape around the hacking culture is that hacks are wrapped in pseudo-science at best yet come across as fact and fill people with such grand visions and hope for self-improvement. If you would only LISTEN and DO all these fantastical shortcuts, then your entire life would be transformed for the better.  These dirty little secrets are your way to get a leg up on everyone else – because the rest of civilization doesn’t have access to the tried-and-true hacks.  Just you.  Right.

The flipside of this is that society is looking for quick fixes to everything.  It’s like hard work and dedication to a goal are the old way of achieving success and completely out of fashion.  If you aren’t willing to hack your way to success, you’re a deluded anachronism.  It’s the previous generations who lived in the Stone Age who had silly visions of easier ways to build a fire and technology-driven Utopia.  Nirvana is right around the corner … If. You. Would. Just. Listen. To. My. Secret. Hacks.
​

It’s like layers of an onion, only this onion is small and not very complex at all.  The naivety required to believe in life hacks is astounding.  It really is.  Common sense gets thrown out as the baby with the bathwater.  As far as athleticism and performance is concerned, the ignorance – or maybe it’s arrogance – required to buy-in to the hacking culture makes me want to bludgeon myself about the head with a 2x4.  The marketing machine behind any new innovation in technology, equipment, training practices, techniques and more is astounding.  Use this carbon wheel because it will save you a nanosecond over the competition.  And, it will only cost you $2,000!  Do this one super awesome brick workout (explained in a vacuum, no less) and you’ll smash the competition in your next triathlon.  Start eating this super food and you’ll be supercharged as if you’re on EPO!  The list of stupidity is endless.  It really is.

And the saddest part?  The goal is no longer the path.  Months or even years of blood, sweat and tears, if we can instead condense all that into days or weeks, fuck it.  I’ve got better things to do with my time.  Common sense and all the wisdom of the ages has gone the way of the Dodo.  The brontosaurus-sized turds (I like this better than “bullshit,” don’t you?) passed off as life-alterting hacks sound so compelling because of the pseudo-science packaging in which they’re wrapped.  OF COURSE today’s hacks are better and more innovative than anything tried in the past, science and provability be damned.  The more I read about how athletes and coaches trained in the past, the more I realize that today’s ways of training and eating and competing are, for the most part, no better.  I recall one example in comparing the speed of Jesse Owens to that of today’s 100m and 200m track sprinters.  If Owens were to have run on similar track surfaces and in today’s shoes, he would be in the mix to win just about any sprint competition.  Think about that for a moment.  80 years beyond Owens’ Olympic glory, sprinters are negligibly faster when technological advances are removed from the equation.  So, how does this mesh with all the hacks around better training to make you bigger/faster/stronger than ever before? 

The biggest mistake people make today in buying in to the hacking culture is that they discount their elders as less intelligent and innovative than those spouting the benefits of unfounded hacks.  It’s like when teenagers think they know it all and their parents are the stupidest people on the planet (admit it, we’ve all been there).

Here’s the rub.  Humans are hardwired to preserve.  From millions of years ago, when survival was hand-to-mouth and we didn’t know from where our next meal would come, we were programmed to save energy.  To conserve.  To find an easier way to subsist and survive.  It’s this primitive drive that spawns the upwelling of hope that someone may truly have discovered a quicker, easier way to solve any problem which ails the world.

If in your training you’ve tried hacks, ask yourself why.  Is it an aversion to hard work?  Is it that your previous training and racing regimen has left you wanting in results?  Is it a refusal to use PEDs even though you know those against whom you compete are juiced and that’s why they’re crushing you?  Is Life throwing curve balls at you and fitting in the necessary training just isn’t possible?  Are you always on the lookout for the latest-and-greatest training secret?  Something else?

It’s the pseudo-science cloaking the hacks that make them all sound so so so appealing.  Throw a few titles or abbreviations after a name and that hack-spouter suddenly has street cred.  We better listen to what he/she has to say, otherwise we risk being left behind and suffering the consequences of unfulfilled promise in all that we do.  Like gold teeth grills, jeans worn below the butt, and the hipster movement, I pray every day the hacking fad will die a very quick, miserable death.  The sooner, the better.

As I said earlier, hacks are like the completely debunked notion of marginal gains.  Emphatically, you will not get better by focusing on the small things or looking for short cuts.  To do so is to contest that you’ve got the other 98.5% of preparation completely nailed.  Which is a ludicrous contention, right?  Why concern yourself with ZIPP’s new asinine wavy carbon wheels and how fast they’ll make you when you can’t even string together a solid block of training?  Why are you following a training program promising a sub-13-hour Ironman in 13 weeks when you haven’t been training for a handful of years?  Why are you worried about the best gels and electrolyte drinks when you’re drinking six Diet Coke’s a day?  Why are you worried about using the best pillow on the planet to ensure fantastic sleep when you are only getting four hours of sleep a night?  And on and on and on.

You are focusing on the wrong things.  Full stop.

As a life-long athlete and endurance athlete coach of 25 years, this is the absolute best piece of advice I can give you.  Right here.  So LISTEN UP.  Forget about the fine, nitty gritty details. Instead, focus on the big picture – the process of what gets you from Point A to Point B over many months or years.  Instead of focusing on a better set of racing wheels, instead focus on putting together a proper training plan or hiring a coach to do so for you.  Instead of drowning yourself in beet juice, throw all the packaged food away and eat more real food.  Train less and rest more.

The premise upon which hacks are built are indeed sound – there is arguably a better way to do something than the way you currently approach it today.  But, if you believe a silver bullet will provide you the glory and success and personal fulfillment you’re currently lacking, then you need to take a BIG step back, look in the mirror and ask yourself why that is.  What biases do you have against proper, intelligent, good ol’ hard work?  Because, it is these biases that are what is truly holding you back.  You think addressing the final 1.5% will overcome all of the shortfalls in addressing the larger 98.5% of preparation.  You want to build a house without first pouring the foundation.

In closing, I’ll offer this.  If we’re honest with ourselves, we know there is not shortcut to any type of success.  In training, there is no new, top secret way that will suddenly allow you to trounce the competition.  You must put in the hard work.  You must grind out the appropriate volume and hours.  You must gut out the days when you’d rather hit the snooze button and roll back over in bed.  You must be consistent.  You must surround yourself with others who are on a similar mission.  Because we are more heavily influenced by our peers than by anyone else with whom we interact.

Good ol’ hard work and perseverance aren’t sexy.  Hacks are sexy.  That’s why they’re so compelling.  Forget the hacks.  Get back to the tried-and-true basics.  Focus on the 98.5% rather than the 1.5%.  Become a black belt in the basics.  Nail them.  Stop spending your money on the technological advancement snake oil (like the ZIPP wheel example).  Step outside your comfort zone.  Rediscover your drive for why you train and compete in your sport of choice.  Embrace the journey and find excitement in its day-to-day challenge.

Help ensure the hack culture dies a quick, painful death.
​

Happy Training,
​Coach Nate
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